Thursday, May 13, 2010

It looks like NBC's re-imagined Rockford Files pilot will be put on hold and revamped—or killed altogether. I'm betting the former, given NBC's nearly year-long investment in the project and the fact that CBS's Hawaii Five-0 and CW's Nikita appear to be a go for fall. (Does the Peacock want to be the only network that failed to produce a potentially winning retro remake—especially with its legacy of Bionic Woman and Knight Rider-style reboot crash-and-burns?)

Perhaps we'll see Rockford and ABC's Charlie's Angels redo midseason. I'm also betting ABC holds on to V for another batch of "pod" episodes this fall—at least till it sees how Five-O and (to a lesser extent) Nikita perform. Hot "private eye/spy" remakes and the continuing decline of highly serialized network dramas could spell the end of V and the return of T&A, er, Charlie's Angels.

I'd love to see a re-envisioned Rockford move forward. Dermot Mulroney, as I wrote in my recent LA Times piece, has big gumshoes to fill in replacing Jim Garner. But the 40ish film actor is a crooked-grinned charmer and—with the proper script and direction—seems up to the challenge of reinventing the quirky-cool Rockford.